Sight for Sore Eyes (Fairy Tales of a Trailer Park Queen Book 8)

by Kimbra Swain

  “Probably not, which is why you are unique. Nonetheless, don’t feel bad about your connection with Levi. It’s a special thing to be close to more than one person in a lifetime,” she said.

  With that, I had reached my tolerance for the small space. “Thank you, Wendy. See you tomorrow night,” I said.

  “Come back anytime, Grace,” she said.

  I flew out of the RV in a hurry. Levi was sitting on the grass with some of the other children playing with Aydan. My little bird clapped and laughed at the other children. Good grief, he was growing so quickly. Levi looked up to catch the panic in my eyes. He scooped up Aydan, rushing to my side. I had already turned to head toward the truck.

  “Talk to me,” he said gently.

  “I can’t,” I said. “Please just drive.”

  He placed Aydan in his car seat, then jumped into the driver’s seat of the truck. I took deep breaths to compose myself. It was one thing for Levi and me to have the tension between us, but it was a whole other thing to have someone else comment on it. Levi stopped the truck on the side of the road before we got home. Aydan had fallen asleep.

  “Levi.” My voice warned him.

  “Look at me,” he said. “Did she tell you what happened in Winter?”

  “No,” I muttered. He heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Good. Something has you upset. You are pulling in a ton of power,” he said.

  I hadn’t even realized it, but I had sucked up the power in the room, plus whatever else along the way to the truck that I could pull from the land. My tattoo pulsed with rare heated magic.

  “The ball showed me a woman in a red cloak, and Tennyson and Jenny talking about me,” I said.

  “Robin. But what about Tennyson?” he asked.

  “According to the ball, they are loyal,” I said.

  “I don’t doubt Tennyson,” Levi said. “At all, but that isn’t what set you off.”

  “Damn it, Dublin. I don’t have to tell you everything either!” I said.

  “Fine,” he said, cranking up the truck to drive us home. “I deserve that.”

  “Levi…”

  “No, Grace. It’s fine. I’ve hidden things from you. It’s not a big deal, because you are right. I trust you from now until forever. Doesn’t mean I have to like it or not let it bother me, which is basically what you told me,” he said.

  “Yes, it is,” I muttered.

  “Then we are good,” he said, but his voice told me we were very, not good.

  When we made it home, he rushed up to his room, pausing at the top of the steps. “I’ll call Tennyson. You deserve to know.”

  “That’s what he said,” I said, as I laid Aydan down in the crib.

  “What?”

  “In the crystal, he said that I deserved to know,” I repeated.

  “Damn,” he said, slipping into his room and shutting the door.

  I shook my arm violently to release the magic that had poured into my tattoo, but it seemed to be attached to me, unrelenting. I needed to find a release for it. The release I needed was impossible to have. I would find another way.

  Astor came home humming an old tune I hadn’t heard in ages. A medieval love song. His voice deep and strong filled the house with its robust and enthusiastic tenor. He turned the corner to find me in the laundry room smiling.

  “Nice voice, Knight,” I said.

  “Thank you, Grace. I didn’t know you were home. The truck is gone,” he said.

  “Yeah, Levi went out earlier looking for his dad. He didn’t come back last night,” I said while I folded towels. Of all the mundane chores in the human world, I hated folding laundry, but there was something simple and methodical about it that kept my mind focused on the clothes instead of all the other things going on around my home.

  After Levi left me to call Tennyson, he got a call from Nestor. He didn’t say much to me except that his father didn’t come home, and that he was going to get him. I could feel his pain and frustration. Astor, on the other hand, seemed happier than a possum eating a sweet potato.

  “Should I go help?” Astor asked.

  “No, just leave it be. How’s Miss Ella?” I asked.

  “I didn’t see Ella,” he grinned. “But I did talk to her father and his lion. Neither of them has changed much.”

  “And?”

  “He seemed quite pleased with my desire to court his daughter,” he said.

  “First of all, it ain’t called courtin’ anymore,” I said. “It’s dating or talking, and you do things like Netflix and chill.”

  “I can’t chill. I’m Summer,” he said flatly.

  “Bless your heart, Astor,” I said. “It means you watch television and make out.” It actually meant something much more serious, but I didn’t need to explain that to the virgin knight at the moment.

  “Oh, that seems like a wonderful evening,” he said.

  “You just let me know when you want to invite her over, and we will all clear out,” I said.

  “Well, I did call her and ask her to accompany me to the bonfire,” he said. “I’ve not been to one in a very long time. Not since my first life.”

  “Very good idea. I hope you have a wonderful time,” I said.

  “Allow me to help you with the laundry,” he said.

  “Actually, would you go and wait for Winnie to get off the bus while I finish this up?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “I see Aydan is awake over there. I’ll take him with me.”

  “He would love the walk outside,” I said. He had been chewing on one of his toys for a bit. I’d sat him down in the crib so that I could fold the laundry. The small one that we kept downstairs could roll around, so he was sitting in the center of the kitchen while I worked in the doorway of the laundry room. When Astor walked up to him, Aydan held his tiny hands up to him. He was spoiled rotten because he loved to be held. He didn’t care who did it either. Just as long as he was close to someone.

  Astor took Aydan outside, and I heard the truck returning. I hoped Levi had found his father, and there hadn’t been any trouble. I felt Levi’s frustration before he even hit the door. Bounding through it, he almost barreled over me but he caught me before we both hit the floor.

  “Levi,” I said his name softly as the tension in his muscles flexed to keep us from toppling to the floor. Instead of letting me go, he pulled me closer to him as he kept us upright. Leaning over me, I felt his hot breath on my neck.

  “He’s fine. He moved into the house that Remy got for him without telling anyone. He was sitting on the sofa passed out when I got there. Just too much to drink. He’s going to kill himself like this,” Levi said. “I don’t even know him, and he’s come here to die.” His strong voice cracked. A wet tear landed on my neck, rolling down my chest under my shirt. Then another.

  “I’m sorry, Dublin. I can send him away,” I said.

  “No, if anything the Otherworld taught me that death is part of life,” he said. Gently he steadied me as he pulled away from the haphazard embrace.

  “What can I do?” I asked.

  “Just give me some peace and quiet tonight. I’m going upstairs. I’ll be ready for the bonfire tomorrow. I promise,” he said.

  “Whatever you need,” I replied. I was glad I had said it because I almost stopped myself thinking that Levi might mistake my offer for something more than it was. Then I scolded myself because I knew he wouldn’t cross the line.

  “Thank you, Grace,” he muttered, then disappeared upstairs.

  Winnie came running in the house waving a paper around. “Momma, momma, look what I made,” she said. I took the pink piece of construction paper from her. I gasped at the picture as my vision began to swim.

  “Grace!” Astor called to me as he sat Aydan down in the crib.

  “Um, what?” I said, dazed by the simple drawing.

  Astor rushed over taking the picture from me. I heard Levi re-emerging from his room to the top of the steps. “What is it?”

  Astor l
ooked up to Levi like he heard him, holding the picture up for Levi to see.

  “Fuck,” Levi muttered.

  “Language,” I wheezed.

  “Momma, don’t you like it? Can we build one so Daddy will come home?” Winnie asked innocently.

  My eyes focused on the tall post drawn on her picture with a tiny house atop it. A bird flew around it while a single blackbird sat at the door. Dots covered the ground below the birdhouse.

  “It’s lovely,” Astor said answering for me.

  “If we build it, Daddy will come home. Or maybe if some of the birds come here, Bramble can tell them about my daddy, and they can help find him. They can tell him that we miss him,” she said.

  Levi approached me cautiously, as I held on to the tiny thread holding my heart together.

  “Yes, Winnie, we can do that, but how did you know Daddy was a bird?” I asked.

  “I saw him in the trailer with Mrs. Robin. He turned into a bird,” she said.

  “The spell has worn off,” Levi said.

  I nodded my head in confirmation. “Do you remember anything else? Were you scared?” I asked, slowly threading a needle to sew back the stitches in my heart.

  “I was, but when I saw Daddy, I knew he would save me. He did, you know?” she said.

  The stitches unraveled again, and I heaved a sob.

  “Of course, he did, Winnie. Daddy loved you very, very much,” I said.

  “Loves,” Levi said. My eyes flicked to his. I needed that little bit of hope that he was offering me.

  “Loves,” I repeated. It was just a week or so ago that I had corrected Troy on the tense of his verb, but here I was doing the same thing. Was I giving up on Dylan? Or just accepting the possibility that he wasn’t coming back? I suppose it was best to prepare for the worst, and hope for the impossible.

  “Come on, Winnie. We can look outside in the shed for some board to make a birdhouse,” Levi said.

  “I thought you needed some time,” I said.

  “No, I was wrong. I need my family,” he replied, as he took Winnie’s hand.

  “I have to go to town,” I said as he went out the door.

  “I’ll be happy to stay,” Astor said. He brushed the tears off my cheeks. “Are you sure you should go out right now?”

  “I need to do this,” I said.

  “As you wish, My Queen,” Astor said with a slight bow.

  Lightly knocking on the door, I heard a groan inside the small garden home.

  “William, open this door,” I called out to him. I could feel him through the door. His aura felt very much like Levi’s, but distinctly broken.

  He slowly opened the door with a scowl on his face. “I should have known you would show up. Are you here to kill me?”

  “What?” I asked.

  “You possess my son. I have upset him, and I just assumed you were here to kill me. You seem to be on a roll lately,” he said.

  “How do you know about that?” I asked.

  “People talk,” he said turning his back on me to pour a dark liquid into a glass. “I would offer you some, but I’m not interested in hospitality.”

  “Fine. Here’s the deal. I’m not here to kill you, however, if you keep upsetting Levi, you will leave this town and not return. He means so much to me, and I won’t have you springing in here just to hurt him,” I said.

  “No one could hurt him like you have,” he said.

  “I think you missed the part about how much he means to me,” I said.

  He walked forward to push his finger into my shoulder while holding his glass of liquor. “You don’t love him,” he snarled.

  William had been in my home. He never spoke much, but I had no idea how much disdain he had for me. Looking through my sight, I expected to see the green haze swirling around him, but I didn’t. In fact, he looked very strange to me. As if in the magical spectrum he was nothing but a shadow. A ghost of the man he once was. Then it hit me. He was afraid that I would turn Levi into the shell of a man that he was. I had said as much to Levi just the other day. He was right to be upset with me. His son, the love talker, had fallen in love with a woman who loved someone else.

  I stepped back from him with my palms up. “That is where you are wrong. I do love him, but not like he deserves.”

  “And it’s too fucking late for him,” he said. “You will be the death of him.”

  I thought of my own children and their future loves. I would be just as upset as this father who never really got to know his son. Which was a shame, because Levi was a wonderful man. Someone William should be proud of, but instead, all he saw was the gutted-out husk that his son would become because of his love for me.

  I also knew that Levi held a hope inside of him that neither of us spoke about where he and I would one day be something. He also told me that our connection scared him to death. It wasn’t figurative.

  Shaking my head, I couldn’t find a solution. There was nothing I could do. I knew of no way to release him. We had tried it before, but we were drawn back together. The fact was I didn’t want Levi to be unconnected from me. If I really admitted it to myself, I didn’t want to meet another one of his girlfriends. Selfish and irrational. I needed to think like the ice queen. What would she do?

  No, that was a terrible idea. She would string him along using him as some sort of concubine like my father did his harem of wenches, which included my mother. I would be no better than Rhiannon leading her servant around on a leash. Not would be. That’s exactly what I was. What would I do without him?

  “You see now,” he said just before planting himself in a chair.

  “Is there a way to release him?” I asked. “I want what is best for him.”

  “That’s the impossibility of it, Gloriana. You are what is best for him, but you are also what is worst. Jeremiah should have never brought him here. I suspect he wasn’t here long before the connection was made between the two of you. Some intense moment where either you gave into him, or he surrendered to you. Either way, it is done,” he said.

  It was neither. I had come after him, and he resisted me. That created a bond between us of trust like I had never known. Not even with Dylan. I was unintentionally torturing him. Probably worse than anything Brockton did to him. The careful walls I’d built around myself since Dylan disappeared were crumbling under the weight of knowledge of why William hated me and now how I felt the same way about myself.

  My hands shook as I looked down at them. Tears welled up in my eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve never meant to hurt him,” I said.

  He watched me through the emptying glass of liquor that he held to his lips. When he lowered it, his gaze changed from hatred to pity. “I see it now,” he said.

  “See what?” I asked.

  “You do love him,” he said.

  “Yes, but it isn’t the same as with Dylan,” I said.

  He waved the empty glass in the air. “Forgive me for my harshness. He is my son. The only part of her I have left,” he said. Boy, did I know that feeling. I felt it every time I looked at Aydan.

  “You have every right,” I said.

  “Promise me something,” he said.

  “I will if I can,” I said.

  “If there ever comes a time when it is possible, that you will be good to him,” he said.

  “I promise,” I said without hesitation. The time he spoke of would be a day when Dylan wasn’t alive on this earth. Even then, I’m not sure where my heart and mind would be if something truly happened to him. But piece by piece, I had already been letting Dylan go.

  The pookas prophecy echoed in my head.

  One to die, one to live, one to expose, and one to mithe.

  When he told me though, there was more to his statement.

  Of the men, you’ve loved.

  I had included Nestor, Remy, and even Jeremiah in that list when trying to figure it out, but the truth echoed around in my head. I had only ever told two men that I loved them. Dylan and Levi. Jenny had playe
d with the punctuation suggesting that the verbs belonged to Dylan and Jeremiah. However, I knew now, it was just one person.

  Dylan.

  He died to go into the jar. There were clear indications that he had risen from that state at some point in the Otherworld. Dylan had exposed the long truth of his love for me when he told Levi his story. The mithe was simple. The only way to truly kill Dylan was to disassemble him in a way that made it impossible for him to reform. Even then, he wasn’t completely dead because once reassembled he would rise. However, inside of me, I had the ability to blast people into icy dust which would evaporate in the normal air. Mithe. There would be no coming back from that sort of thing. Thankfully, I only knew of two beings on earth or below it with that kind of power. Rhiannon and myself. Maybe Levi.

  Levi.

  My bard who had just entered the room via a magical skip. His anger flashed, not at me, but at his father. As he rushed forward to him, I stepped in front of him holding my hands up.

  “Levi, don’t,” I said.

  “I asked you to stay out of it,” he exclaimed at his father. He threw his hand past my shoulder pointing it at him. His muscles flexed with his anger. I zeroed in on his tattoo which seemed to pulse under his skin. If he started playing that thing in this state, he could wipe us all out. What had seemed like a great idea suddenly scared me. I had to reach him. Levi wasn’t unstable or unhinged. He was stressed, and I just needed to calm him down.

  “Levi, I came here to speak to him,” I said. “If you want to be mad at someone, be mad at me.”

  “He only came here to try to drag me away from you. He thought he could save me from you. I told him to leave this town, but he won’t. You need to go,” he said turning back to his father.

  “We have reached an understanding,” William said, as he stood to fix himself another drink.

  “There is nothing to be understood. She is Dylan’s fiancé. When he comes home, they will finally be together like they deserve,” Levi said. “I chose her. I knew she wasn’t mine to have. You cannot blame her for any of this.”

  “Levi,” I said trying to calm him down.

  “Stop, Grace. Don’t you dare feel bad about not loving me,” he said.